[Study]McCracken, D. D. & Jackson, M. A. (1982) Life cycle concept considered harmful

A sample "comfortable" life cycle concept in 1982:

1. Organizational analysis
2. System evaluation
3. Feasibility analysis
4. Project plan
5. Logical design
6. Physical design
7. Program design
8. Implementation
9. Operation
10. Review and evaluation

The authors believed that the life cycle concept is probably, on balance, harmful:

1. Assumption of any life cycle scheme can be applied to all system development.
2. Assumption of fitting mold created in response to failures of the past (fail to build an effective bridge across the communication gap between end-user and system analysis, so far)

• End-user's widest system development was limited by the availability of development tools. Thus, it eliminates the need for communication 
• "Heavy" end-user involvement in all phases
• End-users doesn't know all "system requirements" in advance, system development methodology must take into account that the user needs change during the process.

3. The life cycle concept rigidifies thinking. Emerging methods should have greater responsiveness to change is possible.

Some proposed solutions:

1. Prototyping
2. End-user and analyst: implement, design, specify, redesign, re-implement.

Reference:

McCracken, D. D., & Jackson, M. A. (1982). Life cycle concept considered harmful. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, (7), 29-32.